An example of known article transport facilities, such as one described above, is described in JP Publication of Application No. 2010-228673 (Patent Document 1). Specifically, in the article transport facility described in Patent Document 1, the travel paths (5) for transport vehicles (3) include a primary path (20) which extends by way of storage sections (24) for storing articles, and a plurality of secondary paths (21) that are connected to the primary paths (20) at different locations of the primary paths (20). And each of the plurality of secondary paths (21) is installed to extend by way of article processors (1) for processing articles. And each transport vehicle (3) is configured to transport articles between a plurality of article processors (1) by performing “branching travel” from a primary path (20) to a secondary path (21), and a “merging travel” from a secondary path (21) to a primary path (20).